MSE Colloquium: Binbin Deng, Three-Dimensional Electron Microscopy

Senior Research Officer Center for Electron Microscopy and Analysis, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State Univers

Abstract:

There are various ways to categorize materials: crystalline and non-crystalline, nanomaterial and traditional bulk material, inorganic material and biomaterial, etc. No matter what category a material belongs to, material characterization usually involves structural study and exploring structure-property-function relationships. Electron microscopy is a powerful technique to determine structures. Two-dimensional (2D) electron micrographs contain three-dimensional (3D) structural information of materials. To correctly interpret 3D structural information, various electron microscopy methods were developed. In traditional metal and alloy crystalline analysis, lattice parameters of unknown crystal phases can be determined by selected area electron diffraction (SAED), convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) and High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). With recent advances in technology and methods, 3D electron microscopy has shown a significant growth in structural study of materials. 3D techniques in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) include single particle analysis and tomography. 3D techniques in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) include focused ion beam SEM (FIB/SEM) and serial block face SEM (SBFSEM). In the talk, I will present examples of how different 3D electron microscopy methods were chosen to investigate structures of a wide range of materials including quasicrystal and its relative approximate, virus, protein, spinal cord and wound biofilm.

Bio:

Binbin Deng is a senior research officer at CEMAS in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University. She received her B.S. degree in polymer science from Tsinghua University, M.S. degree in physics from Chinese Academy of Science, and Ph.D. degree in pathology from University of Texas Medical School at Houston. She has been working on electron microscopy characterization of both biomaterial and inorganic materials. Her research interests include multiscale correlative imaging, 3D electron microscopy, Cryo electron tomography, STEM tomography, and in-situ cryoTEM.